Stockton’s Mayor Testing Guaranteed Basic Income for Residents

Michael Tubbs, the 27-year-old mayor of Stockton, California has a radical plan to combat poverty in his cash-strapped city: a ‘no strings’ guaranteed basic income for residents of $500 a month.

Starting in early 2019, Tubbs plans to provide the monthly stipend to a select group of residents as part of a privately-funded 18-month experiment to assess how people use the money.

“And then, maybe, in two or three years, we can have a much more informed discussion about, kind of, the social safety net, the income floor people deserve and the best way to do it because we’ll have more data and research,” Tubbs told Reuters.

The idea of governments providing a universal basic income to their citizens has been gaining traction globally. The Finnish government is running a two-year trial to provide 2,000 unemployed people with monthly payments of approximately $660. In Alaska, each resident receives an annual dividend check from oil revenues from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which Tubbs said is a model for his approach.

The Economic Security Project, a philanthropic network co-chaired by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is providing $1 million to fund the Stockton trial.

The group approached Tubbs at a conference to ask if Stockton would be interested in piloting basic income. “I jumped at the opportunity,” said Tubbs, who was familiar with the concept from the writings of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The issue of economic empowerment is a personal one for Tubbs. Growing up in Stockton, where one in four residents live in poverty, his family relied on government assistance to meet their basic needs.

“My mom was on welfare for the first five, six years of my life,” he said. “You’d get food stamps, but that’s not cash, and maybe food’s not the biggest need … So this gives people more agency to kind of make the best decision.”

According to Sierra Health Foundation, one in three children in the Valley lives in poverty, and in some counties nearly half of all children live in neighborhoods with high poverty rates. “Our policymakers cannot solve the problem of inequity in the state between race, income and health, or help the state truly be the Golden State, unless we examine and confront the complex issues that continue to plague the San Joaquin Valley,” said Pastor Trena Turner, Executive Director, Faith in the Valley.

We recently launched our Fall civic engagement program where volunteer community leaders committed to have 15,000 conversations with voters across the San Joaquin Valley. Here are a few moments from our recent launch.

“We’re here because we strongly believe that the people in the community hold the best hope to change the community. So we’re here marching for peace, for all of the violence to cease regardless of where it comes from. We want our city to be the amazing city that we know it can be,” Pastor Trena Turner, executive director of Faith in the Valley, said during the walk.

Faith in the Valley believes that by coming together as a region, we can leverage investment in our communities across the Valley, dramatically impact policies that benefit the most vulnerable members of our region, and build the power we need to make the Central Valley a place where all people can have safe and healthy lives.